Daily Archives: March 6, 2018

Editorial: Hold that hearing any day now

The recent statements made by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson about wanting to see the Small Business Jobs Survival Act get a hearing, after being blocked for many years, should be encouraging news to anyone who owns a small business or enjoys patronizing them.

In this column, we’ve shared our support for this piece of legislation, which is aimed at getting commercial tenants an automatic lease extension when it’s time to renew despite some unexplained claims that it’s unconstitutional.

What we are asking now though is that the SBJSA finally get that hearing.

If council members continue to just talk about it (or not) then we really don’t see how they aren’t willfully ignoring the systematic annihilation of mom-and-pop shops.

What we don’t need is another study on why storefronts are vacant. We know perfectly well why. Amazon, while a game changer for sure, isn’t solely responsible for murdering brick and mortar stores. Astronomical rents and warehousing of retail spaces by speculative owners are still the biggest problems.

Continue reading →

Suspect charged with swiping bag full of cash and jewelry from Flatiron club

Mar8 larceny suspect1

Bag theft suspect one

By Sabina Mollot

Police have arrested one of the women who allegedly worked together to steal a bag full of cash and jewelry from a boxer who was partying at Jay-Z’s 40/40 nightclub.

Sarah Morin, a 40-year-old resident of Enfield, Connecticut, was arrested at the 13th Precinct in Gramercy on Tuesday morning. However, it wasn’t clear if she turned herself in due to the media attention the incident’s gotten or was brought in.

Police said that on Sunday at about 3 a.m., the 27-year-old victim, who has been identified in news reports as boxer Jermall Charlo, was at the club in Flatiron when he got into an argument with another patron that turned physical. However, once the fight was over and he went back to his seat, he realized that his bag, which he said had $40,000 in cash and $115,000 worth of jewelry, was gone.

Mar8 Larceny suspect2

Bag theft suspect two

Police said Morin was the blonde woman seen in surveillance photos with four other female suspects carrying the victim’s bag. She’s been charged with grand larceny in the second degree and criminal possession of stolen property in the second degree. The NYPD isn’t aware of any prior arrests.

The four other suspects seen at the club, all described as Hispanic women wearing short or tight dresses, have not yet been arrested.

Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).

Mar8 Larceny suspects 3 4 5

Bag theft suspects three, four and five

Opinion: A plea from a child of the 60s

By former Assemblyman Steven Sanders

I am reminded that in the 1960s when I was a teenager growing up in Stuyvesant Town and attending the local public schools, it was largely student agitation and protests that helped bring an end to the Vietnam War. In so doing they brought down a president. After all, most of the 58,000 American deaths were of kids barely out of high school.

Tragic events and fate now summons this generation of students and the millennials to do what their parents and grandparents have not been able to do, to stop the insane gun proliferation and resulting carnage funded by the NRA, and fueled by billion-dollar gun manufacturers who keep pumping out more and more lethal firearms. After all, it is so many students who are the victims of mass school shootings, the latest a high school in Parkland, Florida.

The thing about idealistic youth is that they know no limits and don’t know what they are not supposed to be able to achieve. And it is in this naïveté where success is realized. Won against all odds. Won in spite of the naysayers and pundits who say it cannot be done. The sports analogy would be a 22- year-old Cassius Clay boxing for the World’s Heavyweight Championship against Sonny Liston the toughest prizefighter on the planet. Or the 1980 upstart U.S. Olympic hockey team comprised of kids facing off against the awesome unbeatable Russian national team in Lake Placid.

Continue reading →